You’ve probably heard people who work late night shifts in hospitals, fire stations, restaurants, or on the road protecting our streets talk about how light during the day has a negative impact on their ability to get a decent amount of restful sleep. But, did you know there is a real reason behind it? It’s not merely a preference for darkness that’s robbing them of the recuperative sleep they need in order to wake up refreshed and ready to face the day. But why does light have such a profound impact on sleep and what can people who work these necessary late shifts do to get the kind of sleep they need?

Why Does Light Negatively Impact Sleep?

“In the presence of light, your brain will not produce melatonin,” says Dr. Michael Breus, PhD, Sleep Specialist: On the surface that doesn’t seem like such a profoundly negative thing. However, melatonin is one of the vital hormones that plays a significant role in helping people not only fall asleep but also to remain asleep throughout the night. If a room has too much light, that makes things much more difficult for anyone looking to get a proper amount of sleep.

I am a terrible sleeper. My brain thinks when the lights go out it’s time to think. I’ve solved world hunger in my sleeplessness. I’ve rearranged the furniture to transform my thrift store apartment into a masterpiece of modern design. I’ve negotiated peace treaties between warring countries. I’ve balanced my checkbook from memory. Instead of resting, I exhaust myself. It would be ironic if it weren’t so terribly frustrating! The worst part is that I’m so tired during the day, I fall asleep in all sorts of weird places: on the train, at school, even standing up! Over the years, I have discovered a few tried and true secrets that help me sleep: mysterious tinctures and techniques that power down my head so I can drift off into dreamland like a normal stinkin’ person.

Every Plushbeds latex mattress, latex topper and memory foam mattress is sold with a carbon neutral mindset.

What this means that we have obtained an offset to balance out any greenhouse gas emissions we create by running our website and back end operations.
We worked with TerraPass on doing an audit. They helped us measure exactly how much carbon we were putting into the atmosphere by running the Plushbeds website.

Armed with that knowledge, TerraPass has taken actions to offset our carbon footprint by funding clean energy and other projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
At the end of the day our emissions will be balanced out by a comparable amount of reductions.

Every TerraPass project is conducted and verified according to a publically available carbon offset standard such as the Voluntary Carbon Standard 2007 and the Climate Action Reserve.

We hope that in time many more websites will also become carbon neutral.